Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information Act promotes greater openness and accountability across the public sector by requiring all ‘public authorities' to make information available proactively, through a publication scheme. Under the Act, universities, further education colleges and sixth-form colleges are included as a 'public authority'.

What is a Publication Scheme?

A publication scheme is a document that describes the information a public authority publishes, or intends to publish. By this we mean information that the organisation intends to make routinely available. The scheme is not a list of the actual publications, because this will change as new material is published or existing material updated. It is, however, the public authority's commitment to make available the information described.

A publication scheme must set out the classes, or categories, of information published. It must also make clear how the information described can be accessed and whether or not charges will be made.

The ‘model' Publication Scheme for further education.

Hadlow College has adopted the model publication scheme developed for the further education sector and is therefore committed to publishing the information it describes.

This model is designed for further education colleges across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The purpose of the model is to save institutions duplicating effort in producing individual schemes and to assist the public in accessing information from across the sector. However, to reflect the diversity in size and function of institution, a number of optional classes of information are included. As a result, models within the sector will vary slightly. Any optional classes relevant to us have been included in our scheme.